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Mindfulness

Yesterday, I treated myself to a tiny bit of nastiness. I generally don’t ’cause I think it’s bad karma, but as I’d avoided treating myself to this particular vent for over three years, I figured I might as well do it once, then done. To my annoyance and bemusement, someone decided this meant that I needed to be chastised for my opinions. Erm… … …

… … …

Yesh, I love being thrown into apoplectic anger right before going to bed. I only got to sleep by telling myself to worry about it the next day, doing my best to drone out my vexation with general mindfulness and mentally chanting over the jagged thoughts (thanks, oh hateful brain!). So I did get to sleep in semi-decent order (I consider this a feat, knowing that I’m in depression), but definitely woke up still irritated. I had replied as politely as I could muster back to the person in question (whom hopefully didn’t feel too assaulted in the scheme of things), who in turn thanked me for responding. Well… why would I have not? Even if I’m annoyed, a response is due by rules of politeness. And in that, I started drafting up another reply, but this one was definitely a bit along the lines of, ‘B”$&h, you owe me an apology for insulting me and my right to opinion.’ It even got into the whole snotty ‘go pick x instead of me’ sort of ‘tude… so I’m amazed I managed to make myself erase it and not hit send. That the act of writing out my ire seemed to mainly fulfill my need to express it… mainly. I allowed myself a vexed tweet that I shortly erased, because part of my compulsion is full and complete answers and full and complete expression of emotion. When the ire gets that overwhelming, it needs to come out. It doesn’t care about the swathe of destruction. That’s part of the problem with emotions and bipolar – they are… bombastic, to say the least.

But yes, this is a reason why I generally sit on my negative emotions more than is probably healthy. The release of them leaves too much clean up, and I don’t have the energy for it. I am sure this is part of why friends and family think that I have no emotions, or that they can tell me that mine are invalid, or less valid than theirs. I am at a slight loss for what to do, other than taking what little strength I do have and making it clear that my feelings are valid as relates to me. Ergo, I am free to express them as I need to. Obviously, I’m still mainly going to be mindful; years of fighting a compulsive need to say things that feed the crap out of my anxiety means that I am grateful that I can more easily pick and choose what battles with myself I will face for having an opinion or a feeling.

But yeah, definitely an area that still needs a lot of work.

So for now, I’m going to do my best to keep my mind clear of intrusive fight-y thoughts, try to keep my breathing slow and even, and see if I can continue today’s success at being mainly calm and ‘behaved’. 🙂